He called me… “Mr. Tom”

Many years ago, I was employed as Controller of Hunt Electronics, owned by Bunker, Herbert and Lamar Hunt. The company included an assembly plant in Matamoros, Mexico (the Drive Inn was one of the great restaurants, even played Glenn Miller music).

I would take trips (and eat at the Drive Inn) to review the assemly plant’s work performance and audit the “into/out of Mexico cost-of-goods” so we would be in compliance with United States Customs Office filings.

I became friends with the Assembly Foreman at the plant. One day, he drove me to the Brownsville, Texas, airport….

As I retrieved my bags, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Mr. Tom, I love you and your passion…but please don’t forget to enjoy the moment.”

In today’s business world and social settings, it is easy to forget about the moment. We often prefer to look back to a better time or hope for a better time in the future.

This reminds me of a concept I learned once, perhaps it was from Wayne Dwyer or Scott Peck, in their early years, who said, “we often go through life solving a problem, only to look for another problem to take its place.”

I would like to recommend a book that I have by my bed, “No Ordinary Moments” by Dan Millman. His premise is: “in every moment, the quality of your life is on the line. Life is a series of moments. In each, you are either awake or asleep-fully alive or relatively dead… by treating every action with respect and every moment as sacred… (one will) find a new relationship with life, filled with passion and purpose.”